Cohousing Getting Act Together Close-knit Living Becoming Popular

March 7, 1993|The New York Times

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Cruising along Interstate 80, Charles Durrett smirked at all the Legolike condominiums that clutter the hillsides from Oakland to Sacramento. ``Nothing but big fat roads leading to big fat houses,`` he said. ``I saw a sign once for this one development that said, `Live and Shop.` And it showed a happy couple with a mall in the background.``

Such anticonsumerism may sound strident, if not strange, especially from a developer such as Durrett. But it`s common among those who reside in cohousing complexes, increasingly popular communities that combine the privacy and amenities of `80s-style condo living with the togetherness and frugality of a `60s-style commune.

Durrett, who helped begin the co-housing movement in the United States five years ago, criticizes traditional multifamily developments as wastelands that separate people from each other, isolating them from any comfort but that of consumption. ``Warehouses for people and their stuff,`` he called them.

By contrast, cohousing brings people together. Indeed, at the 12-unit complex in Emeryville -- a town of about 5,000 wedged between Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Bridge -- 27 people, including Durrett and his wife, Kathryn McCamant, live in a renovated warehouse.

True, they own the apartment units in the building. But they also take part in committees that oversee everything from landscaping to laundry to pooper scoopers. More radically, perhaps, they take turns cooking dinner in the common house. Plans vary among cohousing groups, but Emeryville`s residents, in teams of two, cook meals for the group twice every six weeks; these community meals are offered about three times a week.

``There is also usually a spontaneous meal every week, potlucks or whatever,`` said Durrett, who, with his wife, wrote Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (Ten Speed Press, 1988; $21.95).

The book by Durrett, 37, and McCamant, 34, has become something of a bible for the cohousing movement; about 16,000 copies have been sold, and a second edition, with new material about the latest developments in the United States, is to be published in September.

Durrett, who with his beard, jeans and lanky laid-backness, has a faintly hippie demeanor, also operates the Cohousing Company in Berkeley, which serves as an information, referral and consulting service.

``Cohousing is about making life more economical, more convenient and more fun, more practical, and to re-create the opportunity for a sense of community,`` he said.

Cohousing is not without its problems. Projects can take years to get off the ground. In particular, local planning and zoning departments can be very skeptical. And banks are wary because cohousing is unproven.

Then there is the sometimes awkward adjustment of not only getting to know the neighbors, but actually living with them. ``I have noticed that people who don`t have children have the hardest time getting used to it,`` said Monty Hunter, a motion-picture cameraman who lives with his wife, Hannah, and two children, Ben, 8, and Lizzie, 3, in a cohousing complex in Davis, Calif. ``They feel overrun by children`s needs.``

Cohousing originated in 1976 in Denmark, where it is now common; there are about 150 cohousing communities there, and 150 more in Sweden and in the Netherlands. The concept stems from a belief that housing needs in the late 20th century are different from those developed in the middle of the century, when families were larger and women tended to stay at home, taking care of the house and raising the children.

``Mom is working,`` Durrett said. ``She`s not home all day managing the whale of a house and the larger family that goes with it. When I see a single mom or even a married couple trying to maintain a typical single-family home, I see them busy all weekend.``

In the United States, the first cohousing community opened in 1991 in Davis, followed by communities in Bainbridge Island, Wash.; Emeryville, in May 1992, and Lafayette, Colo., in mid-February. About 300 people live in them. ``The idea took hold first in the West probably because that`s where we are,`` said Ellen Hertzman, project manager with the Cohousing Co.

Elsewhere in the nation, 12 cohousing groups are seeking land, and 150 more are trying to get their plans off the drawing board, Durrett said. The groups are scattered throughout the country.